Altered Carbon Season 2: 10 Things That Didn’t Make Sense

The popular Netflix show Altered Carbon season two was released in February this year. The series explores a cyberpunk world where rich people are immortal. It has been made possible due to alien technology. People had loved the first season and had been talking and speculating various theories about it.

This season kept fans waiting for two long years and it was absolutely inevitable that it would draw comparisons and a ton of dissection. Today, we shall dissect ten such things in the second season that made no sense at all.

10 No Nudity At All

The second season was a total lackluster with all the major USPs, essence and charm missing. Cyberpunk mainly revolves around a world that has no respect for humanity or law and order. Nudity, lack of respect for bodies or sensuality are the major operatives.

Sex and physical abuse have to be rampant (not a hard and fast rule, but, usually they do) throughout the plot. The first season had gratuitous nudity and sex which established the fact firmly, that in this universe, no one respects bodies, life, or death. Season two actually killed the staple concepts of the genre.

9 Did Angelfire Discriminate?

When Jaegar and Danica see that Kovacs Prime has betrayed the Protectorate and joined hands with the rebels instead of capturing Quellcrist and the last envoy, Danica sends her own backup team to the forest. The elder inside Quell takes over her and invokes the Angel fire. It pours down on the Protectorate forces and the whole team is burned and crisped up as a result.

Even the forest is incinerated. But, Trepp who is touching Quell, is neither infected nor she burns. Whereas, her brother got infected immediately when he touched her in Stronghold. In the last episode, Kovacs touches Jaegar after killing him and he too gets infected instantly. Also, he burns alone while the building they stood in, remains untouched.

8 The Invasion

Quell was invaded by the elder, but, she made it outback. Anil, Trepp’s brother had also been infected and invaded by the elder, but, no one tried to bring him back by sending him into the construct. Even Trepp did not go inside to draw the elder’s attention elsewhere.

She gave up saying she has lost her brother when it was pretty evident that he was still there inside the stack. It was shown when she had gone inside the construct to find him earlier.

7 Character Continuity

Takeshi was not believable. The brooding, muscular and tough Takeshi Kovacs that fans had come to love, was gone. The whole persona of the lead character was morphed and not in a good way. That killed half of the charm. It didn’t make sense that if a person is resleeved, his entire character will be changed fundamentally and drastically. Kovacs was resleeved twice in the first season too, but, both Will Yun Lee and Joel Kinnaman did a fantastic job of maintaining the continuity and consistency in Kovacs’ personality(emotions, body language and mannerisms).

Kinnaman Kovacs smoked cigarettes because his original sleeve(Ryker) used to smoke. That is great detail and realistic(unlike what they showed in S2). Anthony Mackie seemed like he was playing Mackie himself, instead of Kovacs.

6 Paper Thin Characters

All the characters, even the main characters are written paper thin with no character development whatsoever. Almost all side characters except Poe and Dig have nothing to flesh out. They have pretty forgettable subplots.

Trepp, who is one of the main characters (main sidekick?) in the books, does not emerge so, in the series. Her love story is very poorly recorded and executed. The overall tone of the show was less punk too.

5 Chemistry Between Kovacs And Poe

Even the small talk or teeny-tiny conversations between them used to light the screens up, but in the second season, it felt like that friendship was gone. Poe looked like he was trying too hard to maintain that charisma.

They had no spark. On top of all this, Kovacs kept yelling at Poe every now and then. What is mind-boggling is, a person who could endure that much torture in the first season and even managed to break the virtual, can get irked so much so that he gets mad at an AI. The writing completely tanked in S2.

4 How Did The DHF Survive?

Kovacs knew Quellcrist’s plans. She had told him the night before, that she wanted to take the elder inside herself again and kill both of them. He loved her too much to let her go, so he sacrificed himself instead. He touched Jaegar after he shot him and was instantly fried to death.

If the elder’s technique of killing was giving real death while simultaneously wiping all the backups existing anywhere, how did Kovacs survive that RD? How was his DHF not wiped off? Of course, it’s just hinted and not confirmed right now that the DHF is of Mackie Kovacs.

3 What Is The Role Of Songspire?

In the first season, the femme fatale Miriam Bancroft shows off one of her proud possessions, a Songspire tree to Takeshi Kovacs. She explains that the tree is so rare, she had to spend millions to buy that one. It looked important whenever it lit up at a slight touch of a hand.

In the second season, it was revealed to be an alien tree and the residence of an alien who somehow survived the massive genocide. But, why is the tree rare? How the alien lived inside it without infecting or controlling it, was never explored.

2 No Clarity On Villain

There was no lead antagonist in this season. Quellcrist looked like a negative character first, but, soon she turned out to be innocent and confused. Danica Harlan was shown to be scheming and plotting various things, but nothing seems to realize ever.

The elder crawled up as an antagonist suddenly and abruptly, but sank down as fast, without much of a back story or a full-length subplot. Jaegar was a fantastic character with some really good scenes to his credit, but, it was never made clear as to where his true intentions lie. He was invaded and killed before he could actually do something worthwhile.

1 Who Is The Lead Protagonist?

There seems to be a huge identity crisis in the second season. No character was conceived as the true protagonist or an antagonist for that matter. All the “main” characters seemed confused too, about their roles. Takeshi Kovacs was put on back burner in his own series and in his place, Quelll was focused one too many times.

No considerable arc was created for her either, because of which fans couldn’t really care about her. Many fans wrote reviews that they were confused as to who they were supposed to root for, or even like!

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